SATNAC, the annual Southern Africa Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference, will again be hosted by Telkom in partnership with sponsors from the industry. This year’s event will be held 6-9 September at Arabella Hotel & Spa, in the heart of the Kogelberg Biosphere Reserve, near Hermanus in South Africa’s Western Cape region.

A wide range of technical topics to be discussed at Africa’s leading ICT conference will be centred on this year’s theme “Africa – The Future Communications Galaxy.”

The conference, initially focussing exclusively on student presentations of telecommunications-related research, debuted at the University of Cape Town in 1997, drawing less than 100 delegates then.

Now, in its 18^th year, SATNAC is heralded as one of the premier ICT discussion platforms on the continent. Attendance alone has jumped almost five-fold since SATNAC’s modest beginnings and industry role-players from around the world now make up the delegation at the conference.

SATNAC Conference Chairperson, Mr Alphonzo Samuels, says: “SATNAC allows industry leaders, academia and operators to showcase their applied research in the ICT sector and also affords a platform for postgraduate students to highlight their research successes. With so many industry leaders attending SATNAC, the conference provides an excellent networking platform for the ICT industry.

“This year’s Conference theme, “Africa – The Future Communications Galaxy”, will see industry leaders discuss key issues and challenges and report on the progress of industry-related research, much of which is linked to the exploration of the continent’s potential – in relation to its markets or its citizens - from an information, communication and technology perspective,” says Samuels.

Closely linked to SATNAC is Telkom’s Centres of Excellence (CoE) programme, which was established 19 years ago with a specific focus on building advanced research capabilities at institutions of higher education. The programme has shown tremendous growth since its inception and, to date, boasts 16 Centres of Excellence across the country at leading universities.

The SATNAC Conference is Telkom-hosted. Diamond sponsors include Huawei, ZTE, Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent andASAJE. The following companies are also sponsors of the conference: ADVA / Jasco, CBI, Dartcom, TFMC, Saab Grintek Technologies, XON Systems, DFA, Bytes, Aria Technologies, Accenture, Ericsson, MCorp/FibreCo and Coriant.

Registration for this year’s conference is currently open. To participate in the informative deliberations around “Africa – The Future Communications Galaxy”, please register for the conference at www.satnac.org.za. The SATNAC Organising Committee urges all interested delegates to register as soon as possible as accommodation is limited.